INVESTIGATIVE HEAT / CLINTON SLEUTH ALSO DID WORK FOR 92 RACE 

Newsday

February 27, 1998, Friday Reported by Special
Correspondent Michael Dorman and Ken Fireman of the
Washington Bureau; written by Fireman. 

Washington - Terry Lenzner, the high-powered private
investigator who was hired by President Bill Clinton's
lawyers to work on the Paula Jones and Whitewater cases,
also did political research for Clinton when he was gearing
up to run for president in 1991, according to three former
associates of the investigator.

One of the targets of Lenzner's investigative work for
Clinton in 1991 was then-Gov. Mario Cuomo of New
York, who was at the time a potential rival for the 1992
Democratic presidential nomination, according to one of
Lenzner's ex-associates, who asked not to be identified.

The ex-associate said the 1991 investigation centered on
Clinton's fear that Cuomo had discovered and would reveal
potentially embarrassing problems in a political fund the
Arkansas governor had established before launching his
presidential campaign.

The White House said last night it was unable to comment
on whether Lenzner worked for Clinton in 1991. "We are
not able to respond to those questions about what happened
seven years ago in Arkansas," said a spokesman, Jim
Kennedy. Lenzner could not be reached to comment.

Lenzner surfaced this week as a figure in the Monica
Lewinsky controversy when he was accused of digging up
dirt on two Republican lawyers on behalf of the president
and then was hauled before a grand jury by Independent
Counsel Kenneth Starr to explain his recent work for
Clinton's personal attorneys, David Kendall and Robert
Bennett.

Starr was said to suspect that Lenzner might be responsible
for what the prosecutor called an "avalanche" of negative
rumors about his staffers that he said needed to be probed
to determine if they were designed to hamper his
investigation of Clinton's relationship with Lewinsky.

In a joint statement, Kendall and Bennett acknowledged
that Lenzner and his firm had worked for them since April,
1994, "to assist in the defense of matters related to the
president." But they denied using Lenzner or anyone else to
investigate "the personal lives" of "prosecutors,
investigators" or the Republican lawyers, Joseph diGenova
and Victoria Toensing, a married couple who are working
for a House committee on a politically sensitive probe of
ties between the Teamsters union and Clinton.

Lenzner, 58, is a former Justice Department civil rights
investigator and Senate Watergate committee lawyer who
is well known for his take-no-prisoners style. "If I had done
something wrong, I wouldn't want Terry Lenzner on my
back," said Sam Dash, his boss on the Watergate
committee. "He was very aggressive, but always within the
law." Lenzner's firm, Investigative Group International, is
widely regarded as one of the nation's largest and most
formidable private investigation agencies and does most of
its work for corporate clients and law firms.

Lenzner, however, also has done "opposition research" for
political clients in recent years, including Sen. Edward
Kennedy (D-Mass.) in 1994 and Republican Senate
candidate Robert Monks of Maine in 1996. He was hired
by Clinton's legal defense fund in 1996 to investigate the
source of more than $600,000 in suspicious contributions
brought in by longtime Clinton friend Yah Lin Trie, who
was later indicted for campaign finance violations. He was
also approached by a group of Indians at the behest of
another Clinton friend, Cody Shearer, about doing negative
research on Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles of
Oklahoma and his wife, but the Indians later decided not to
proceed.

Lenzner's work is controversial, especially with those who
find themselves his targets. "I don't mind you messing with
me, but I do mind you messing with my family," Nickles
told Lenzner during a dramatic confrontation at a 1997
Senate committee hearing. "He was a gumshoe for the
Democrats on Watergate and he's been a gumshoe for the
Democrats ever since," diGenova said yesterday.

It was not known until now, however, that Lenzner's work
for Clinton began as early as 1991. "Actually, I encouraged
Terry to get involved in political research work while I
was working with him as far back as 1987 and 1988," said
one former colleague, Mike Moroney. "He set up an
opposition research operation. And I know he did work for
Clinton in '91, but I never heard anything about a Cuomo
investigation."

Cuomo said he never heard about being the target of such a
probe. "If they did investigate me, I must have gotten an
awfully good report," Cuomo said. "Otherwise, Clinton
wouldn't have offered me the Supreme Court." (Cuomo
was said to be the leading contender for a high court
vacancy in 1993 but took himself out of the running.)

James Carville, who ran Clinton's 1992 campaign, also said
he had no knowledge of a Lenzner investigation of Cuomo
for the Clinton campaign.

Carville said the Clinton camp's strategy toward Cuomo
during the period in 1991 when Cuomo was considering a
presidential run was "don't provoke him . . . People were
saying don't say anything. Keep your mouth shut. If you've
got to say something, say something nice, because he
Cuomo would be a formidable candidate."

But the former Lenzner associate who confirmed the
Cuomo investigation was a long-time colleague and friend
who was working closely with Lenzner at the time of the
inquiry and knew the intricacies of the investigator's
operations. He said Clinton hired Lenzner chiefly to
determine whether Cuomo knew about the political fund
problems.

Lenzner has ties to Clinton through Brooke Shearer, a
former investigator for his firm who is married to Deputy
Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and has known the
president and Hillary Rodham Clinton since their college
days.